"Serendipity"

Works by Ersilia Crawford and Cheryl Starer

Date: November 21^st-December 3^rd 

Opening Reception: November 22^nd, 6:00pm-8:00pm 

Location: Asian Fusion Gallery, 15 East 40^th Street, 2^nd floor

“Confronted with events from past experiences….”  

“…. Realizing transformations which come together by chance” 

“Serendipity” Set to open November 22^nd and run through December 3^rd features two outstanding women artists, Ersilia Crawford and Cheryl Starer.

Cheryl’s Statement 

After twenty years of challenging my perceptions of the conscious and the sub-conscious as an abstract painter, I have freed myself from the strictures governing my formal training and work more instinctively.  This decision has lead to an acute awareness of line, movement, and color.  I attack each canvas as I would approach a piece of sculpture, and in my latest series, scale remains large and encompassing; while forms come alive, and are further articulated with brilliant color.  A recurring theme of my work is to use the canvas to exploit the refractive and reflective properties of light. I strive each time to achieve this through the use of pure color. 

With the series titled 'Childhood,' I am after the playful innocence of color combinations and the pure joy of line drawing that children achieve.  I am always searching for the perfect form and the perfect line and let my inner creative eye lead the way. 

Ersilia’s Statement

After painting in various styles, but often including bits and pieces of colored paper, musical scores and fabrics, I am now wholly interested in using collaged materials to create a world of connected disparate things.  I always use bits and pieces: threads weavings, scraps of fabric and acrylic paints. I cannot help it, each step calls for the next and when I think I am finished, I still find more. 

In this process, I am discovering and uncovering my own history, memories and fantasies.  There is the interplay between materiality and sensation, the layering of planes and colors, composition and form falling in place almost automatically by its internal order or disorder. Firmly rooted in materiality, the work reaches for a metaphysical experience of fantasy and poetry. While following threads, connections and layers, the viewer enters this world with lots to discover.  At first the complexity might seem impenetrable, but I invite the viewer to step out of the comfortable and known, to look again and give a slow reading and connect to what resonates. I want my work to touch the senses and tweak curiosity while being playful and joyful.  In the end, the work is not about materials, textures, composition or color.  It is about serendipity, about things just happening, and being fresh. It is about a creative process that happens anew with each viewing.